I would like to display/croup by "album" and "year" problem is with albums that have more than one year in the tags, like various albums, these then displayed fractured, i.e. by tracks with the same album name. very untidy and annoying.

Can someone help me with the syntax to create a way of displaying/grouping by "albums" with the "year" and to ignore the year if there are multiple years in the tags ?.

I'd use an additional tag RELEASE DATE, which should the same across all tracks of a VA album, and then group by $if3(%RELEASE DATE%,%YEAR%,%DATE%) or similar.

Thanks for your reply.

I really don't want to create another field in my big collection. Besides the various albums which I have compiled I have also compiled my best of for a single artist, So I'd really prefer the group scheme to ignore the "year" if there's more than one year within a album.

You can use a lot of things as a switch (marked with purple) to toggle the date display. This one checks whether ALBUM ARTIST is 'VA'.$if($stricmp(%album artist%,VA),%album%,%album% '('%date%')')

If you don't want to use that tag (although it would be really efficient) and you have all of your albums tagged as 'Best of ...', you can also validate that instead:$if($stricmp($left(%album%,8),'Best of ',%album%,%album% '('%date%')')

You can use a lot of things as a switch (marked with purple) to toggle the date display. This one checks whether ALBUM ARTIST is 'VA'.$if($stricmp(%album artist%,VA),%album%,%album% '('%date%')')

If you don't want to use that tag (although it would be really efficient) and you have all of your albums tagged as 'Best of ...', you can also validate that instead:$if($stricmp($left(%album%,8),'Best of ',%album%,%album% '('%date%')')

Thank you for the explanation and for giving me the correct syntax, I can now "see" how I can manipulate those two If clauses.

Did you actually try what Daeron suggested? Change “VA” there for whatever you actually use, e.g. ‘Various Artists’.

yes I did try what Daeron suggested but his syntax doesn't keep my Various albums grouped as one album irrespective of year, it groups identical years by track with album title, that's why I went "hunting" and found that syntax above.

Well at least it groups my various stuff correctly now, I'm grateful for that.

Heh, thanks – it was just too early in the morning Nah, I don’t have very advanced knowledge of title-formatting. Chances are, members who do can help you out with something that both is simpler and actually works for you!

QUOTE (tagtypedisplay @ Apr 4 2012, 10:34)

yes I did try what Daeron suggested but his syntax doesn't keep my Various albums grouped as one album irrespective of year, it groups identical years by track with album title

Hmm, I’m not sure why this is. It might help Daeron or someone else to figure this out if you specify which UI you’re using and where you’re entering the grouping string; mentioning things like that is usually a good idea.

Also I highly recommend using the %album artist% tag instead of %path%, which is really clumsy. You don't even have to re-tag most of your files as if %album artist% is missing, it auto-completes with %artist% (check the wiki). After that you'll be able to use %track artist% as well, available if %album artist% differs from %artist%, which happens when you are dealing with VA albums (and does not require any additional tagging).

You can try other methods too, but really, there is a reason why these exist and that is efficiency.

Try providing further details then. For example a picture would be good about the current results (the VA album being shredded by dates), including the properties view like what I did on mine.

You basically need 3 things for this to work: the grouping pattern, the %album artist% field filled as 'VA' and the album names being the same. If these are correct, it should work regardless of anything else.

You basically need 3 things for this to work: the grouping pattern, the %album artist% field filled as 'VA' and the album names being the same. If these are correct, it should work regardless of anything else.

The reason this 'works' is that you have no '' markers around the () symbols in the red part, therefore that as a whole gets ignored altogether. Consequently, regardless of whether the first part equals true, you end up with the same grouping pattern. The whole syntax literally equals with just: %album%

I also wonder why do you check whether your albums' name equals with 'Various'? Are all of your various albums tagged that way? How do you distinguish between each compilation if they all have the same name? I still highly recommend you getting used to %album artist% tags, which makes a lot more sense. Check the example below.

I have read the OP's initial post a number of times and his problem does not define itself clearly to me;

For one of these album types, the Tags always define like this:

$directory_path(%path%) is constant (all the tracks live in the same parent folder) $meta(album) is constant, and always contains the string "Various" . $meta(date) is variable . $meta(album artist) is ...I'm not sure !? $meta(artist) is variable (obviously the track artist names will be different) $meta(title) is variable (obviously the track title names will be different)

Is this the scope of things ...or is there something else ?

Is this a sorting problem, or is it a playlist viewer grouping display problem ?

So far I understood it like: he has one parent folder, a possible subfolder named 'Various' which may contains all the VA albums. Those also seem to have all tagged as %album% = 'Various' and have no %album artist% tags at all. Other tags change on per-track basis. It's a grouping problem. It would be possible to adjust the code to either check whether the subfolder is Various ($if($stricmp($directory(%path%,2),Various)) or whether the album is 'Various' ($if($stricmp(%album%,Various)), I just don't see the point since its clumsy. Using %album artist% would make much more sense.